My goal with this series is simply to collect and post sentences from the readings that struck me.
Sure, Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel – With Maps isn’t Shakespeare. But who doesn’t enjoy a thrilling maritime adventure tale? It’s an underrated book, complete with illustrations. Certainly worth your time.
It was hurricane hair.
pg 63
The image this renders in your mind. That swirl on the crown on a young man’s head. Hurricane hair.
His kicks popped off the bone,
pg 64
This adds a bit of sound to the text. You can hear the “pop” of the kick coming off the bone. It’s both audible and visible.
He was not a defeatist. But the air was poison.
pg 127
Chuck keeps a positive attitude in a hostile situation. Respect.
He was a resilient person, not given over to negativity. But at a certain point, sooner or later, he was going to either:
a) freeze to death, or
b) drown.
Whichever came first.
pg.164
So much of this book is about Midshipman’s Chuck Dugan’s resilience. Floating at sea, stuck on Emergency Rescue Buoy No. 49, falling into a coma, no matter the obstacle Chuck Dugan carries on.
He passed under a wave and came up reciting the Midshipman’s Table of Priorities.
“Midshipmen –” he began, his voice cracked and faint. He spat out some water. ” – – will use the Table of Priorities when determining the precedence of one activity over another. ONE. Orders to report to the Superintendent, Commandant, Deputy Commandant.”
He went under. Slowly, he returned.
“TWO. Emergency calls for immediate medical and dental care. THREE . . .”
He disappeared.
“ELEVEN. Appointment with academic advisor
during pre-registration each semester . . . TWENTY – FOUR.
Liberty. “
pg 173
More notes on the benefits of committing ideas and rules to memory. Reciting poetry, your alphabet, or the Midshipman’s Table of Priorites can help one detach in a stressful situation. Also, the Table of Priorites is another detail that Eric Chase Anderson uses to construct the world of this maritime tale.
Chuck tried to consider the situation carefully,
but his thoughts were muddled. He didn’t want to
co-operate if he was a POW. There were rules to that:
strict Geneva Convention. Don’t co-operate, don’t give out more than your Name, Rank, and Serial Number.
Since this was his first experience as a captive – –
which he assumed he was, though he couldn’t remember
whose or which war – – he wanted to get it right.
pg 179
The benefits of committing rules and ideas to memory. They’ll help you handle yourself in threatening scenarios.
Chuck sat quietly for a moment. He took a sip of the coffee — Navy-style black and boiling hot. For an instant, he felt faint, his head reeling from the on-rush of heat.
pg 180
What’s the recipe for Navy coffee? Brew it black and boiling hot. Keep it that way post pour. Serve it in a hand-less mug. Boom Navy Coffee. Sip and smile.
More wonderful details Eric Chase Anderson uses to ground the story.
He longed – – briefly but intensely — for a tuna-fish sandwich and a cold glass of milk. Then decided coffee was very much all right. Mainly he felt curious.
pg. 183
We’ve all had those moments after a hard run, a long hike, or maybe after changing a tire, where being physically spent brings on intense hunger.
Perhaps this paid for the sin he had just committed. The sin of condemning those three boys to their deaths.
pg 195
This story, while filled with quips and diagrams and illustrations, is heavy. It has weight. Death lurks throughout the pages.
These pamphlets in Wes Anderson’s Criterion Collections are worth the price of admission. They’re filled with drawings, interviews, and behind- the-scenes insights. An analog version of a blu-ray’s bonus features.
Here Wes shares a glimpse of his process:
When I’m writing, I keep notebooks of my ideas for sets, props, and clothes. I incorporate some of these ideas into the script, but I set the majority of them aside to give privately to the different department heads during preproduction. In the past, I have occasionally forgotten some of my favorite ideas until it was too late – – for example, after the movie is out on video. To prevent this from happening on THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (which contains more perhaps unnecessary visual detail than both my previous films combined), about three months before we started shooting, I asked my brother Eric, a skilled illustrator, to help me create a set of drawings that would include much of the information I wanted to communicate to the crew — and that would also suggest the overall look and feeling of the movie.
We had already found the house where I wanted to film (in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem), and our production designer, David Wasco, had provided us with a set of blueprints, so I was able to very specifically plan the contents and arrangements of each of the rooms, and Eric was able to meticulously render them. Eric was, in fact, so meticulous that many of the sets had already been constructed by the time he finished the drawings. Eventually, however, his illustrations became the standard equipment on the walls of the production offices and art department and in the notebooks of everyone on the crew — a sort of manual to keep next to your script. We include a copy here for you.
— Wes Anderson
Criterion Collection Pamphlet. The Royal Tenenbaums
Is Wes Anderson the filmmaker with the highest percentage of his movies in the Criterion Collection? 9 from 10? I’m sure the French Dispatch is lurking at the door.
DB: what or who has had the biggest influence on your work? ECA: my family certainly was a big influence on me. my father was a geologist and draftsman for a texas oil company in the early 60s, and I got my love of tiny, neat writing and labeling things from him, as well as an affinity for maps. my mother was a painter whose oil portraits were all around me growing up. of course both of my older brothers influenced the stories and kinds of imaginary experiences I was exposed to and liked.
but my biggest influence as an illustrator and storyteller is walt disney. he is if anything in my book, an underrated storyteller/artist. to me, he’s focused completely on impact. all he cares about is how is this going to work on the viewer? his philosophy and mission is to be the stand-in for the viewer before a thing is made. so he’s focused on clarity and emotion and speed and pleasure and the whole symphonic experience of the story. as opposed to, say, making a totally faithful adaptation of kipling. this is what a storyteller should be like, a kind of advance team for the viewer/reader.
during the period in my early twenties when I was starting to do more writing (at the same time when I re-captured my love of maps in stories) I also started watching the movies I’d loved as a kid again. I’d sort of forgotten most of them. it was good timing, because I was finally out of the educational system, free from critique and judgment. I was just immersing myself in the works, free to embrace and love them on their own and to scrutinize what it was they were doing, how they were made, and why they worked. re-visiting the great works of your childhood is maybe a good thing for anyone to do who’s interested in stories and illustrating.
Fascinating how Eric’s father was a geologist and draftsman, and his mother a painter of oil portraits.
Eric’s work appears to combine each of his parent’s professions. The colored pencils, the portraits, the maps, the neat small writing, the labeling. The influences are there from both sides.
We all know Wes Anderson. But Wes’s younger brother, — Eric Chase Anderson, is way underrated. He’s an illustrator, documentarian, and novelist. He also played the voice of Kristofferson in the Fantastic Mr. Fox.
In this excerpt from The Life Aquaticwith Steve Zissou Criterion Collection edition collectors pamphlet, Eric and Wes share their drawing origin stories and how Eric’s drawings influence Wes’s movies.
It begins with little drawings. Little drawings lead to the set and character details that show up on film:
WES ANDERSON: In a review of somebody else’s movie in the paper the other day, a critic referred to me as a miniaturist or something like that. I guess because I put in a lot of physical details, and I like cooking up extra ideas to add to the sets and costumes, and inventing an imaginary world. But what I’m more inspired by is something that happened to me or someone in my life who had a strong effect on me, or a novel, short story, play, or a movie where the characters moved me, or where I was swept up in it. I do like little drawings, however. We do have stuff in the movies that is tiny, you know? A Swiss Army Knife, a punctuality award pin, something written in the margin of a book.
CRITERION: What’s a little thing in The Life Aquatic?
WA: The Kentucky Zissou fly.
Here they describe how their father’s work notebooks act as inspiration and source material:
ERIC CHASE ANDERSON: Which is one of two pieces of artwork I did for The Life Aquatic. The second is when they get to the bottom of the ocean and Bill Murray takes out a notebook and looks at it.
WA: This notebook is not exactly a crucial element of the story, or a crucial element of anything at all, but it’s personal because to me it’s really inspired by our father’s work notebooks.
ECA: Oh, yeah, right. Exactly.
WA: The way he organizes his stuff is very much, like, this points to that, and the little note indicates this over here, with lots of arrows. His brain is kind of graphic.
ECA: The source material is deeply embedded in our minds.
The Anderson brother’s drawing origin story:
C: Who started drawing first?
WA: Well, I started drawing first, because I had a four-year jump. I’m older.
ECA: I didn’t start drawing until I was in my midtwenties.
C: Really?
ECA: Yeah. I wasn’t necessarily good at it. I had to draw once in college. I had to design a poster for a play I directed. It looks just like my drawings now, except it was a cutout of an ant—like an old Saul Bass cutout—and I labeled the legs of the ant with things from the movie: mystery, car crash, dead brother.
WA: I had three types of drawings that I would obsessively draw. One was trees. Giant trees that people lived in, with people doing motorcycle jumps on one branch, a swimming pool built on another branch, elevators in the trunk, and a helipad.
C: Tree cities?
WA: Tree cities, basically. Then I had imaginary mansions. Then I had giant drum sets that would fill five pages taped together, with a guy in the middle and about two thousand drums.
This is obvious, but drawings make excellent gifts:
ECA: I made a Christmas present for Wes that was a map of this famous country house where I house-sat in Virginia. I didn’t know much about paints. It was something I was doing without really thinking about it. I gave it to Wes, and a year went by. The next Christmas, I made a couple more maps: a house map of where we grew up, with different things that we had experienced as kids, like escape routes from the second floor, you know, a loose floorboard, or where a pencil sharpener was, a strange angle in the bathroom. Wes and I had been collaborating on a Christmas present for my sister, which was a map of a minivan. We talked about it, and we both came up with the text that each of the four kids would have in relation to the van, Then overnight, Christmas Eve, I drew it. It was a good Christmas present.
WA: It was the process of him segueing from the maps being something that represent a space to telling stories—although even the first one that you did had an element of that.
ECA: Wes had an idea that I should make a map for the people at St. John’s, where we shot Rushmore. I sent it to Wes, but I didn’t package it well. It arrived spindled via FedEx, with a hole punched through it. He said, “It’s really good, but I think there’s a couple of changes you can make, and you can do it one more time.” That was fine, because the next time I did it, many more of the ideas were in much better shape to be presentable. Wes liked it so much he said, “There’s no way I’m giving it to St. John’s.”
WA: I made a good dupe for them.
And the process of how Eric’s drawings will influence Wes’s movie’s directly:
C: So, turning to The Royal Tenenbaums—now the drawings precede the making of the film.
ECA: I made wall paper for Richie’s room. First, I made drawings at home really small. Then those went to a warehouse, I think in Queens, where they used blueprint machines to blow up each little tiny drawing. Then they used a stencil to punch through and leave a charcoal line. Then they finished the outlines with a Sharpie.
WA: What it’s supposed to be is, the walls were painted on by Richie Tenenbaum, and they’re his record of the family’s memories. So for Tenebaums, Eric made, one, a set of drawings of all the sets I asked him to do; two, Richie’s drawings on his walls; three, a series of portraits of his sister; and four, the DVD itself— which has, I think, the best cover.
ECA: I have a memory of sitting in a coffee shop in Houston. I was there with Wes, and he was figuring out how to tell the beginning of The Royal Tenenbaums through a tour of the house and how to introduce all this information. He was thinking out loud, and I was kind of following him. It might have been one of those Christmastimes when mapmaking was in the air. I remember him saying, “It’s a map, but it’s not a map on paper. It’s a map in movie style. We have eight minutes of movie map.”
C: How much of this material comes from your shared experiences?
WA: Well, there’s always some inspiration from real life or from my personal experience. Some characters are inspired by a couple of my friends rolled together, and some come from two lines of a play I saw, and some come out of nowhere. There are a few drawings on Richie’s walls, for instance—an image of an archaeological excavation with the mother—which refer to our own past. There’s one thing on Richie’s wall that I didn’t suggest—an image of a day a tiger escaped from the zoo near their house. Well, that’s not in the movie or referred to anywhere. That was something Eric made up. Only now, at this moment, I realize, we should have added that into the movie. That would have been good for that beginning-of-the-movie section where it refers to different things in the family’s history. You can hear Alec Baldwin say . . .
ECA: “One day, a Bengal tiger walked down Archer Avenue.” The kids would be inside the basement, looking out the window through the burglar bars.
WA: What would be the thing he would say after that? There would be a cut to the front page, a tiger in the snow — we would have to make up the newspaper — “The Morning Sun reported that it was killed after eating three dogs and a Siamese.”
ECA: But the drawings sometimes have little bits of echoes of stories that we liked as kids — even if they didn’t really happen to us — because we all traded books and things. Imaginary events can be shared experiences too.
WA: That’s good. That’s what books and movies are. Imaginary events can be shared experiences too.
I find Eric Chase Anderson is similar to the late Jason Polan, in that whenever you see his illustrations, it compels you to pick up a pencil and draw.
Floodlights and Goalposts 